I have been waiting for this day. The local elections gave a taste, but this was the reality, and this is closer to the truth of the next General Election as well.
I voted Liberal Democrat on the basis of its manifesto, and on the basis of its stance during the Labour government. During that time the Liberal Democrats were to the left of a hollowing-out Labour Party and took much of its urban vote. The student vote obliged too, with a promise of no fees and other politicians not telling the truth. Then Nick Clegg not only propped up the Tories, but did so with enthusiasm, thus stealing the votes from people like me who voted Liberal Democrat to keep the Tories out.
If the Tories were put in for stability, it should have been for no more than economic reasons, and not on the basis of Tory only economics but also the different approach of the Liberal Democrats at the election - closer to Labour. Fanciful Tory policies should have been ditched to when they win an election.
Instead, the Liberal Democrats have gone far further than any Coalition Agreement, and thus introduced the Bedroom Tax and Council Tax to the poorest. Who'd have thought it - the Liberal Democrats introducing poverty to the poorest? Their tax cuts for the 'hard working families' - that nasty mantra - one would expect from the Tories while making life easy for the wealthy, which the Tories were able to do.
During the election UKIP was clever. It made a play for the white working class. I saw it during the election broadcasts. Thus Labour has been damaged, because the poorer voters were given somewhere else to go, even while Ed Miliband tacked slightly to the left on essentials. Such folk ought to read the UKIP manifesto, which as well as being anti-EU is pure right wing Toryism. But at least they are not parading as one thing, and doing another.
Clegg ought to go, and take the rest with him. This means Laws and Alexander in particular. They are all political crooks. Hopefully the electorate will remove them, especially Clegg in Sheffield. They all went native, ditching what they argued for at the General Election.
It's a bad day for those of us who are pro-European. I voted Green, and I know there are contradictions in that vote for me, but I vote for the package as a whole nearest me as a whole. I'm sceptical regarding climate change and the Greens have my vote! The Greens are not pro-European Union as I am, although they co-operate among themselves and are constructive. Plus they have a refreshing democratic internal polity, rather as the Liberal Democrats have had and need to use now to unseat Clegg.
I will not vote Liberal Democrat again until Clegg is gone, and this 'orange book' bunch of pseudo-Tories is removed from power. Cable is acceptable - but barely as he privatised the Post Office. Who'd have thought that? No wonder the Royal Mail is moaning about having to deliver to rural and distant areas: that's why it was nationalised and once within the Civil Service. Let's have it back then, and the railways (a Green policy). One has to give some escape route from the present disaster, regarding Vince Cable and party remains.
Anyway, oh so disciplined, the disaster is so great for the Liberal Democrats that they are now surely having to do what they did to previous leaders in recent times. They won't, beyond the damage of chatter, but the blade is coming down now and the blood on the floor now will be thick and runny at the next election.
Lesson: Do not steal votes.
Oh this says it better:
It’s not about Clegg. It’s really important that the remainder of the party don’t allow this to become some sort of Clegg-focused issue.
The 2010 party hasn’t shed two-thirds of its support because of Clegg. It’s shed two-thirds of its support because two-thirds of us didn’t want the Orange Book, didn’t vote for the Orange Book, and have been appalled to see the LibDem Parliamentary Party implementing the Orange Book. It’s far too late now for the MPs to try and “differentiate” with the Tories. They were elected standing on a manifesto, and ten years of policy platforms, which did not adopt a “public=bad/private = good” default position, which did not back massive public spending cuts in a recession, which did not support the hammering of the poorest and the feather-bedding of the richest, which did not support the further fragmentation and selling off of our health and education services. We already had two right-wing Thatcherite parties in 2010, and we didn’t vote for them. So why on earth the leadership expected to retain our votes when they decided to become a third right-wing Thatcherite party remains an utter mystery to me.
It’s not Clegg. It’s the policies which they have supported and implemented. Unless the rump party members realise that, then there is no way back. To be honest, I don’t see a way back anyway. The building of a viable third party, which took thirty years from 1981 to 2010, has been utterly destroyed in 4 years by the catastrophic political miscalculation of the current party leadership. It’s a tragedy for British politics, an absolute tragedy. But it’s not Clegg. Every single LibDem Parliamentarian who voted for NHS privatisation, for the bedroom tax, for Gove’s giveaway of our schools to his chums, and for the prolonging of the depression through masochistic economic illiteracy, is to blame.
This isn’t the worst yet. The leadership and MPs are still kidding themselves that 2015 won’t be as bad as this at Westminster. Yes it will. If the LibDems still have double figures of MPs, they’ll be lucky.